On October 15 this year, 29 year old Tibetan environmental activist Tsongon Tsering was sentenced to eight months in prison in Sichuan Province by the People’s Republic of China, after he took to the Kuaishou short video platform to share a five-minute message to reveal the illegal sand-mining operations of Anhui Xianhe Construction Engineering Company, in the administrative region of Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. The company’s actions, carried out in the Dangchu River-a vital waterway feeding into Asia’s major rivers, including the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers—have severely disrupted the environment and the livelihoods of local Tibetans.Despite his efforts to bring attention to the issue, he was detained and later sentenced. The broader implications of his imprisonment are deeply concerning.
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This is the fate of any Tibetan environmentalist who attempts to highlight the illegal and environmentally activities carried out by the Chinese in TAR. Prior to the Chinese occupation, Tibet was ecologically stable, but since 1950 when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) entered the region, rampant destruction of its resources have been carried out on a large scale.
Members of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE) recently convened in New Delhi (Dec 17-19, 2024) to discuss a host of issues for boosting the Tibetan campaign against the Chinese occupation rule in their homeland and towards a negotiated peaceful resolution of the issue. Among the issues raised in a 12-point resolution which seeks to “resolve the Tibet-China conflict through the Middle Way Policy and seek genuine autonomy within the PRC’s constitution,” the exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources also features. The TPiE has called on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “to initiate scientific studies on the PRC’s exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources and its adverse effects on global climate change.”
Tibet is known as the “Third Pole” due to its vast ice reserves, serving as the principal watershed for Asia. China calls Tibet its “Number One Water Tower.” Climate change and resource exploitation have led to rapid glacial melting, affecting water flow in major Asian rivers. The exploitation of water resources has caused landslides, floods, and pollution, impacting downstream regions that depend on these rivers.
A new report by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), reveals that China’s rapid hydropower dam projects are causing irreversible harm to Tibetan culture, the environment, downstream nations, and the climate. The report, titled “Chinese hydropower – Damning Tibet’s culture, community, and environment”, combines detailed regional research with advanced Geographic Imaging Software (GIS) analysis, examining 193 hydroelectric dams built or planned in Tibet since 2000.
One stark example is the 2,240-megawatt Khamtok hydroelectric dam in eastern Tibet’s Derge County, which will displace thousands of Tibetans, demolish their villages, and destroy invaluable cultural sites, including centuries-old Buddhist monasteries. The report highlights the significant and detrimental impact these projects have on local populations, religious sites, and the surrounding environment.
China’s present development policies in Tibet relating to dam building and hydropower generation, land reclamation, settling nomads and fencing of grasslands, afforestation, conversion of farmland to grassland and forest, all sound impressive on paper, but may not be as well thought through or appropriate. Tibetan environmentalists have serious reservations over the wisdom and implementation of China’s development policies on the plateau.
One of the greatest threats to Tibetan people, culture, and environment is the massive influx of Chinese civilians and military personnel into Tibet, especially through population transfer programmes. The Tibetan Plateau now sustains a growing human population. Beijing’s solution is to pour in more subsidies and enforce extensive urbanisation.
Conversion of grassland to cropland, reclamation of traditional pastures of semi-nomads to allow commercial development, growing rapeseed on low-lying pastures around Lake Kokonor by Chinese settlers and military units, uncontrolled gold mining and illegal harvesting of wild medicinal herbs, infrastructure development such as highways, new townships for settlers and railroad tracks have led to the degradation of Tibet’s grasslands and that this is having serious consequences on the livelihood of Tibetan nomads as well as affecting climate patterns. China does not acknowledge that its policies are the cause for grassland degradation. Undermining the role of Tibet’s nomads has resulted in a grassland crisis wherein the combined impacts of erosion, fencing, sedentarisation, debt, poverty, taxation, toxic weed invasions, soil loss,threatens the very survival of the nomadic way of life.
Environmental issues deserve to be considered in their own right, on their merit as part of the heritage of the world. Whether Tibet’s political issue is resolved or not, the environmental issue cannot be neglected as it is directly related to the welfare of the people.
China claims that Tibet is experiencing growth and prosperity, but the reality is that, under Chinese rule, Tibetans are impoverished, marginalised, and excluded; the sensitive and globally important ecology of Tibet is deteriorating; and many plant and animal species face extinction.
Mining in Tibet is spreading widely without consulting the local Tibetans and without proper environmental impact assessment. Beijing has increasingly enticed foreign investment and technical expertise into the exploitation of mineral resources in Tibet. Tibet comprises 1/8th of the land area of China, and is rich in mineral ores. Extensive gold mining is conducted in Tibet. Modern gold mining technology that Chinese use in Tibet involves machine, chemical and water intensive processes in which hundreds of tons of rocks are moved and destroyed for every ounce of gold extracted. Since cyanide is used as a processing agent by the gold mining industries, the downstream environmental risks cannot be neglected especially because mines of interest to western companies are all situated near rivers. One tablespoon of two percent cyanide solution is enough to kill a human being. Moreover, the nature of mining activity is such that it provides absolutely nothing to the local Tibetan communities other than few unskilled job opportunities, often in risky and toxic environments
Critics had long questioned China’s claim that the development of Tibet was the sole reason behind the building of the 1,956-km Siling-Lhasa Railway. In fact 16 large copper, lead, zinc, iron and, possibly, crude oil deposits exist along the railway line. And this is the real motivation for China to spend a colossal $ 3.7 billion on Tibet’s railway.
Areas of the Tibetan Plateau bordering China are already highly industrialised, with little attention paid to pollution control. In the arid Tsaidam Basin of Tibet’s far northeast region of Amdo, oil fields pump two million tons of crude oil annually. Aluminium smelters, asbestos and lead and zinc mining are expanding under the patronage of the Chinese Government. Tibetans are powerless to appeal.
The ecosystem of Tibet is not only important for the inhabitants of Tibet but it has an effect on the environment of the whole of Asia due to Tibet being the source of the larger rivers and also because the Tibetan Plateau controls the monsoon patterns, as clearly established by scientists. The immediate effects of this are felt in India, China, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries downstream.
